Yes, she’s from Chicago. Yes, she’s the First Lady, but she’s also First Lady of the whole United States. Why do we all have to pay for a trip her hometown may or may not benefit from? Half of Chicago doesn’t want it, but we all get the bill.
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are both traveling to Copenhagen this week to promote Chicago’s bid to host to the 2016 Olympic Games–and they will be making the 3,979-mile trip on separate airplanes. Taxpayers will pick up the tab for both jets ferrying the president and first lady separately to Europe.
Using the Congressional Research Service cost estimates and the inflation adjuster from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost for the one-way 7.5-hour trip from Washington, D.C. to Copenhagen on the first lady’s plane would range from $29,532 (White House Military Office) to $107,717 (U.S. Air Force).
Obviously it will never happen with this First Couple of lottery winners, but maybe the next president and wife will respect forcibly-confiscated tax dollars as we do.
Wow, she sure travels in style….
Only two jets? Will that be sufficient to carry their servants, security personnel, automobiles and helicopters, etc., also? I wonder.
On a humorous note… Will Gore decry their emissions?
Gore:
Come on Obama, man. You’re not helping my credibility.
Oh, by they way. You owe $10,000 to purchase carbon offset credits. Just make it out to Gore… Albert Gore… Junior. Care of “Big Green.”
Somehow I highly distrust Wham-O’s cost budgeting, and the Air Scouts ain’t much better.
I heard yesterday (can’t remember the source) that the entire trip would go somewhere in the cost range of $7 to $17 million dollars, a figure that sounds more believable to me.
Your tax dollars at “work”
Igor
Igor:
Your tax dollars at “work”
It would seem that my “tax dollars” are enjoying a life of leisure.
All I want to be, when I grow up, is a “tax dollar.” I truly envy them.
Seriously, how many vacations/trips can they take in one year? (oh yeah, they’re working; wink wink nod nod)
Either the media never really reported on GW’s trips, or he didn’t travel this much. Probably a little of both, I just don’t think he and Laura went overseas and across country as much as these two do!
The press only seemed to follow Bush when he went home to Crawford to see his friend Cindy Sheehan.